Ronny Gabriels Photography

It had been a long day of travelling when we finally arrived in our hotel in Las Vegas on the 6th of September.  The waiting in airports and long flights combined, we had pretty much been travelling for 24 hours. Only to realize when we drove our rental car over the Las Vegas Strip that it was in fact Labor day weekend. Possibly one of the busiest weekends in Las Vegas. Ah well, what’s a traffic jam at 9PM in Las Vegas when you can start your 3 week vacation right? Right!

That Monday was spent walking and driving.  The walking in the AM in Las Vegas and the driving in the direction of Zion National Park. Our first official stop of the vacation.  But first Vegas. Let’s just say that I’ll never become a fan (or maybe when I had too much too drink and couldn’t tell reality from fiction). It is so unbelievably over the top that you are going to have to see it for yourself to believe it. And because the difference between the indoor air-co’s and the outside heat made for an almost sickening environment I was glad to get going for Zion. I’m glad I saw Vegas, but I wouldn’t be too disappointed if I never got back there.

So Zion.  We arrived in Springdale, were our hotel was located, in the late afternoon. The hotel was called “Majestic View Lodge” and it more than delivered on it’s name. You can see some of the photos in the “Zion National Park” gallery on my site. It was the last stop of the Springdale shuttle bus to the park so that meant we could leave the car at the hotel and make our way to the park by bus and there take the shuttle bus into the park itself. All of the smaller parks in the US should implement this. It’s convenient, fast and a great way to have an almost guided tour of the park.  As an extra bonus you eliminate cars from the park which is great for visitors and wildlife alike.

  View from the Majestic View Lodge in Springdale, UT

I don’t know whether it was just because Zion was our first park on the trip or not, but I was pretty impressed with it. Zion was one of the parks I had done almost no research for beforehand, so I didn’t really knew what the park had to offer. A lot as it turned out. Most of the canyon parks are build on the rim of the canyon. Zion national park is actually located on the floor of the canyon which gives you straight cliffs reaching up hundreds of feet right beside you, while having a very green feel at the ground level with lots of plants, trees, a river and wildlife.   

  Bighorn sheep near the Zion National Park East Entrance

The first night we explored the park just from the bus because we had limited time. The second day we made quite some stops and started our hiking with the riverside walk on the far side of the park and the emerald pool trail later that same day.  It was a great warm-up for the rest of the vacation and it gave a pretty good idea of what the park was all about. On day three we started the Observation point trail early in the morning after a golden tip of one of the bus drivers.  Although it was the trail with the biggest elevation change and also took the longest to complete in the entire park, we felt up to a challenge.  The only thing I can say is that the view was worth the 5hour hike.  Look at the photos and dare to disagree.

View from Observation Point in Zion National Park

An overview of the entire park and beyond, observation point is though to reach but worth every step. We did see people coming up the mountain in the sun when we were going down around noon and by the look of their faces it save to say “START EARLY”.  Before 10AM most of the trail is in the shade and my god does that make a difference :-) We took the afternoon off and stayed by the pool only to go back to the park at sunset for some photographic opportunities (I couldn’t resist).

 
Evening shot in Zion National Park (Riverside walk)

Two full days was all we had at Zion National Park before we had to leave and go to Bryce Canyon. Now because Bryce and Zion are so close together we made a “little” (read 5hour) detour via Grand Canyon North Rim.  If you are every looking to visit the Grand Canyon in peace, this is the way to do it.  The North Rim is arguably a lot smaller than the South Rim, but because of the fact there is only one hotel and pretty much nothing else in a two-hour drive radius, it beautifully quiet, plus a lot more beautiful nature-wise in my opinion. As an added bonus the drive up to the North Rim travels over the absolutely stunning North Kaibab National Forest road. So despite taken 6 hours to get from Zion to Bryce (which is basically a 1 hour drive), it was a great day.  The photos from the North Rim will be included later with the other Grand Canyon photos.

So with Stage 1 complete, Bryce Canyon was the next beautiful stage in this three week trip.  Check back soon for the story about Bryce.

Hope you enjoy the photos!  See them here!

From the 6th until the 26th of September, Merel and I undertook a big 3 week roadtrip along some of the US’s most famous national parks.  Starting in Las Vegas we drove by Zion, Bryce, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Arches, Canyonlands and the Grand Canyon, visiting Salt Lake City, Monument Valley and Hoover Dam along the way, to end up in Las Vegas again for the trip home.

Of course a lot of photographs were taken (2018 to be precise) and in the next days, weeks (and months if things don’t go well) you can expect a lot of them on my site.  I will prepare them national park by national park in the order that you saw above. Since they were all shot in RAW, please have a little patience because it will take a while to get them right and posted. I’m currently working on the shots from Zion and so you can expect them here hopefully by the end of the week.

What can you expect from the photographs? Expect a lot of landscape and animal shots. I don’t take too many “people” shots, so don’t get your hopes up too much for those.

Hope to see you back here or on the site very soon.

Ronny

Finally, the FIA GT came back to Belgium in what was going to be a great racing weekend. The 24h of Spa is probably one of the most famous races on the European continent and after missing it the last two years, I finally made it.

Maserati MC12

A weekend featuring European GT4, British Formula 3, Lamborghini Super Trofeo and of course, the full FIA GT circus is a feast for everybody who loves racing. Not only do you get the some epic racing cars from the likes of Maserati, Corvette, Aston Martin, Porsche and Ferrari.  This year the field was extended with the GT3 spec Alpina B6, the monsterous Ford GT (including one in 2010 spec) and the trackside Godzilla that is the Nissan GT-R. Add the GT4, Britisch F3 and Lamborghini Super Trofeo cars and any of you interested in racing know why you should have been there. 

Bruxelles corner at sundown

As more often than not, weather conditions made it quite tricky on Saturday, not in the least for the photographers. The weather change constantly from sunny, to dark overcast to rain. This meant that every 10 minutes I had to change the settings on my camera to get some decent exposures.  Sadly this didn’t always work out too well.  When you have to push the ISO up to 400 to get properly exposed shots (of moving cars), you’re almost guaranteed to have lower quality shots.  The end result was that only about 10% of the photos I took made it through the first cut.

The winner of the 24h of SPa – Corvette Z06

In the end I didn’t get all the great shots I wanted, but the result was nonetheless not that bad (after setting my goals from “Professional publication shots” to “Great racing shots made by someone behind the fence”). You can have a look at the final cut of photos on my website in the Photos - Racing Season 2009 menu. I hope you enjoy them.

As a PS a little story about, in my opinion, the best shot I got the entire weekend.

Godzilla (Nissan GT-R) in the Pitlane

This shot was taken while standing on top of the Formula 1 Pitboxes. I got up there by buying a more expensive “Paddock” ticket and joining the “24h Club” which was free with a “Paddock” ticket.  The shot was taken while the cars where getting to the starting grid.  All the pro’s and VIP’s where at that point either on the track or in the pitlane. So ironically if I had gotten press credentials, I would have never been there to take the shot. I like this serendipity.  I was jealous of the “credential” people all day, but in the end, my best shot would have never been taken if I had been one of them. 

50 people started on what would be a very interesting photo walk through Antwerp. It was the second annual Worldwide Photo walk organized by Scott Kelby and it was a record breaking edition. Over 900 cities participated and Antwerp was luckily one of them.

It was my first photo walk and although I was sceptic about it, it turned out to be a great meeting between a lot of photographers who just like photography. When it comes to photography, I’m not the most social of the bunch. In my personal opinion, photography is very much about your own personal vision. A lot of times when photographers come together it ends up being a (unhealthy) competition. Ironically, the World wide photo walk also has a competition attached, but I must say that not too many where actually thinking about that.

So it was a nice exchange of ideas, some chatter and just a nice afternoon of photographing a beautiful city.

Make sure to check the photos on the website. The best of these photos are also uploaded into Flickr.

The first race weekend for me in over a month turned out not to be everything I was hoping it to be.  The VW Fun Cup 25h has quite a nice line-up.  With the Belgian GT and the BTCS racing as an opening act followed by the biggest “amateur” endurance race of the season it promised to be interesting to say the least.  But this still is Belgium and at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit there is one thing you can never discount, the rain. 

 

For my third race weekend in a row, the rain spoiled a lot.  Where I was hoping to stay at least ‘till after dark, by 4PM I had been rain-soaked twice and my knees were killing me (what happens in very humid weather). So what should have been a long day at the track, turned out to be a short day. 

Too bad, because the atmosphere was there, a lot of entertainment and some great racing.  I got shots from the Belgian GT and BTCS races and some more shots from the paddock where VW was ever-present.  So all in all it certainly wasn’t a waist, but it could have been so much more. The photos can be found, as always, on the site under “Photos --> Racing Season 2009”.

So I’m driving to southern France tonight (after the Scott Kelby’s Photo Walk here in Antwerp) and will get back to Spa next weekend for, I hope, a rain-free and spectacular 24h of Spa FIA GT. So hope to see you all there for one of the most famous endurance races in the world (damn Le Mans ;-))

This morning the 26th of June at around 5AM CET, not a week after his 78th birthday, my grandfather past away.

 

Herman Gabriels

June 20th, 1931 – June 26th, 2009

A while ago Scott Kelby presented his second annual worldwide photo walk on July 18th.  The idea is to have photo walks in cities all around the world on the same day as sort of a massive social photography event.  This year, Antwerp has it’s own photo walk, to which I have already subscribed.  I would like to invite everyone in the Antwerp area to join as well, since this is a great opportunity to get to know some other photographers from area.

I just checked and there are still 33 places left, so join today.  More information can be found here.

Hope to see a lot of you there and may the weathergods be with us that day ;-)